The "Middle East and Terrorism" Blog was created in order to supply information about the implication of Arab countries and Iran in terrorism all over the world. Most of the articles in the blog are the result of objective scientific research or articles written by senior journalists.

From the Ethics of the Fathers: "He [Rabbi Tarfon] used to say, it is not incumbent upon you to complete the task, but you are not exempt from undertaking it."

Wednesday, June 5, 2013

Jonathan Spyer: Hizballah enters the Syrian Abyss

by Jonatahn Spyer

Photo: Buthaina AlOthman

Two Grad rockets were fired this week at the south Beirut suburb of
Shiyah. This district borders the Dahiyeh – the stronghold in the city
which houses the main offices of Hizballah. The decision to strike so
close to Hizballah’s nerve center is a dramatic escalation by the Syrian
rebels of their simmering conflict with the Lebanese Shia militia.

The official leadership of the Free Syrian Army repudiated earlier
claims of responsibility for the rocket fire issued in its name. But the
official leadership of the FSA do not in fact command the mainly Sunni
Islamist men who do the actual fighting in Syria for the rebellion. So
their statements are of only secondary importance.

What is happening is that Hizballah’s long standing but increasingly
overt engagement in the war in Syria is now being paid back in kind by
the rebels.

Some of Hizballah’s best fighters have for the last ten days been
spearheading a relentless regime advance into the city of Qusayr. They
are now two thirds of the way into the city, pushing northwards. The
going has been tougher than expected. The rebels have fought for every
inch of ground. But the Lebanese Shia fighters, backed up by regime
artillery and air power, are moving forward.

The fighting in Qusayr does not represent the opening of a new front.
Rather, it is the most intensive manifestation of a long active sector
of the war, in which Hizballah and regime forces battle rebels in the
poorly demarcated border zone between Syria and Lebanon. This reporter
wrote as far back as October last year that ‘whatever the tactical
details – the FSA and Hizballah are already at war.’

But Hizballah for a long time preferred to blur its own role in the
fighting. It claimed that the Shia fighters on the ground were local
Syrian villagers, who had requested assistance and advice from
Hizballah. No longer. A week into the fight for Qusayr, Hassan Nasrallah
issued a ringing declaration promising victory to his followers.

It has evidently occurred to elements among the Syrian rebels that if
Hizballah can interfere in their dispute, they can return the
compliment.

Hizballah dominance has been apparent in Lebanon ever since the Shia
brushed aside Sa’ad Hariri’s feeble challenge to its authority in May,
2008.

The movement’s ascendancy has never been accepted by all. But neither
the urbane followers of Hariri, nor the divided and declining
Christians, nor the ever pragmatic and few in number Druze, were able to
pose any kind of a challenge.

It was long clear that if a challenge were to come, it could come
from one quarter only – that of the Islamists among the Lebanese Sunni
population. For a long period, though, a challenge from that quarter too
seemed unlikely. Lebanon’s Sunnis do not have a long tradition of
militancy. Hizballah’s Iran-supplied weaponry and expertise seemed to
conclude the argument. Sunni radical preachers such as Sidon’s Ahmed
al-Assir were half comical figures. No one is laughing now.

The Syrian civil war has altered the power calculus in Lebanon. The
Salafi Islamists of Lebanon have noted the emergence of an insurgency
dominated by their ideological compatriots in Jabhat al-Nusra and Ahrar
al-Sham. The Syrian rebels, meanwhile, as they battle Hizballah’s forces
in Homs province and the Damascus area, observe that their enemies have
a backyard in which they are vulnerable.

The Lebanese Sunni Islamist and the Syrian rebels have therefore now
begun to strike Hizballah in its underbelly – Lebanon itself.

The Grads in south Beirut were only the most graphic demonstration of
the opening of a new front in Lebanon. In the northern city of Tripoli,
the long smoldering conflict between pro-rebel Islamist militants in
the city’s Bab al-Tabaneh neighborhood and the pro-Assad Alawites of the
Jebel Mohsen district once again broke out into the open.

Over 30 people died and more than 200 have been wounded as the Sunni
Islamists, thought to include Jabhat al-Nusra members, descended on the
rival neighborhood. Their act came only days after the opening of the
assault on Qusayr City.

There are fears that if and when Qusayr falls to the regime, the
Islamists in Tripoli will seek to exact their vengeance on the people of
Jabal Mohsen.

Which means that Tripoli has now in effect become an outlying sector in the Syrian civil war.There have been further rocket attacks by rebels across the Syrian
border on the Hizballah supporting Hermel area. And rebels have issued a
number of blood-curdling threats against Hizballah. In one video,
commanders and fighters of Aleppo’s Tawhid Brigade threatened to ‘target
the locations’ of Hizballah everwhere, in response to the party’s
engagement in Syria.

The Tawhid commander further warned that unless the Beirut government
restrained Hezbollah, the rebels ‘will have to move the battle to
Lebanon,’ and said that ‘“Our developed rockets will then target
Beirut’s southern suburb and beyond… and I will give directions to the
revolutionary in Syria to attack the gangs of Hezbollah in all Shiite
village.”

Another group of rebels in Qusayr accused senior Hizballah commander
Mustafa Badreddine of leading Hizballah forces in the city and vowed to
kill him. They referred to party leader Hassan Nasarallah as ‘Hassan
Nasr a-Shaytan’ (Hassan victory of Satan.)

In Sidon, too, followers of Ahmed al-Assir fought with Hizballah
supporting members of the so-called ‘Resistance Brigades.’ Shotes were
fired outside of the Bilal Ibn Rabah Mosque, where Assir is the Imam.

What all this adds up to is that the sectarian balance of power in
Lebanon is ripe for shifting as a result of the emergence of the Sunni
insurgency in Syria. Hizballah chose or was instructed by its Iranian
patron to go all in to help save their ally in Damascus. As a result,
Lebanon is now being drawn inexorably closer to the flames of the Syrian
civil war. The explosions in the Shiyah district may well be remembered
as the decisive opening shots to renewed civil strife in Lebanon.